


No Patience for Pleasantries

by WrithingBeneathYou



Category: Naruto
Genre: Animalistic Traits, M/M, Marriage Hunt, avian Uchiha, feline Senju
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 08:23:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19247449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/pseuds/WrithingBeneathYou
Summary: The Uchiha are formidable foes on the battlefield, but this forest is Tobirama's domain. Peace accords be damned, he won’t stand to be taken in a marriage hunt.





	No Patience for Pleasantries

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for the [2019 Naruto Rare Pair Bingo](https://naruto-rarepair-bingo.tumblr.com/) event taking place over on Tumblr. 
> 
> Board A, "animalistic traits."

The soft patter of rain does little to mask the sound of footfalls and wing beats in the distance.

Tobirama’s tufted ear twitches towards the discord a kilometer away and swivels to follow its progress. There’s an obvious stumble and a strident curse that puts a smile on his face. Izuna’s plumage may be modeled after one of the smaller carnivorous passerines, but, from Tobirama’s knowledge, shrikes hunt in the open. The forest that serves as his shield and sword is obviously no friend to wings and no ridiculous feathered toy is going to conquer him in his own territory.

Snorting derisively, he leaps from a narrow branch to the bole of a tree and digs his claws in deep. His bob-tail whips out wildly behind him in a pointless attempt to counterbalance the slick landing. Fortunately, experience guides his instinctual need to ascend, pushing him to slip-slide his way down into a denser portion of the canopy before he loses his grip.

Again, a shout rings out, even louder and more high-pitched than the last, imbued with a sudden plume of pheromones that Tobirama can’t help but angle his face toward. Pulling his upper lip back in a sneer brings forth the ferrous taste of metal and heat. It’s a heady and alluring flavor in the same way injured prey is—draws out the baser instincts in him and makes him salivate at the thought of bounding after that scent and running it down. If there were better stakes, he would happily do just that. Izuna’s wings would snap so sweetly under his weight.  

But, unfortunately, he has no time to chase his pleasure right now. He needs to focus, to put all of his energy into circumventing a nightmare.  

A short time later, a rising series of chirps answers Izuna’s distress call from surprisingly near-by. It sets off blaring sirens in Tobirama’s hindbrain. His hackles rise as he bares his teeth in Madara’s general direction, startled by how close the raptor had come without him any the wiser.

Damn their eyes. The Uchiha are formidable foes on the battlefield, but this is his domain. Peace accords be damned, he won’t stand to be taken in a marriage hunt. The Uchiha elders were well aware that propositioning peace at the price of a hunt wouldn’t necessarily work out in their favor. If they were clever, they would have hinged their fool’s gambit on an arranged mating instead of giving Tobirama the chance to evade the clan head and heir entirely. Tradition-bound fools.

He hisses under his breath and takes off once more.

Dark leaves and darker earth do little to conceal him as he races through the canopy in search of a place to bunker down and wait out the next twelve hours. The poor camouflage is of little concern, though, considering how inept the fledglings seem to be. Another alarmed cry pierces through the veil of rain, followed immediately by Madara’s deceptively saccharine cheeps.  

With his feline ears, Tobirama can’t pick up the full frequency of their chatter nor begin to break down the nuance of it. He only knows there are two voices on account of the disparate volumes, tones, and types of utterance. It’s frustrating, but there’s no point lingering on the shortcomings of his species.

He stretches out his long legs and takes pleasure in the flex and pull of muscle. Each bounding leap takes him through the canopy as fast and silent as the lynx he resembles. Rain strikes his exposed face with its comforting sting, falling heavier now. Even with his hair hanging flat over his happuri and into his eyes, he never once missteps on the treacherous boughs.  

In between thunderclaps, the Senju lands’ branches whisper to him—warn him of the interlopers and show him where to step to hide his scent from their olfactory snares, where to elude their sharp eyes. These trees are the result of his brother’s patient tending and they understand his plight as if need was a thing communicated through shared blood. Tobirama takes strength in their earthy aura, as verdant as Hashirama’s embrace, and follows their direction without question. Finally, the subtle rustle of foliage falls still and the forest stays silent.

He’s safe.

It’s with a touch of relief that Tobirama releases the tension in his shoulders and allows himself to slow to a trot. Even with the thick pad of calluses on his feet, the bark cuts into him and he only now realizes he’s been bleeding as he stumbles to a stop. He swivels his ears and scans the area just to be sure, but senses nothing.

Thankful for the reprieve, he immediately peels off his sodden kimono and finds a suitable crown in which to rest. Rivulets of water wash the sweat away as quickly as it forms, but do little to alleviate the heat of exertion. He pants, too mindful of his humanity to allow his tongue to loll even when alone, and waits for his heart beat to settle. Once the pounding in his temples recedes, he focuses on his wounds.

The moss growing along the willow tree at his back is soft and useful for cleaning out the worst of his wounds. The bark— while bitter on his tongue—takes away much of the initial sting. He tears off the strips of linen around his shins and wraps his feet as best he can. It’s an arduous, painful process now that the endorphins give way to a knife-edge ache, but he can’t afford to limp his way through the remainder of this asinine marriage hunt. Too, sparing chakra for Iryō Ninjutsu right now would send up a flare for miles.

This will have to do. In any event, there shouldn’t be any further need to run tonight. He balls his wet kimono up and uses it to cushion his head as he settles in and waits for morning.

Night falls quickly, hastened by the gathered storm clouds. A flash of lightning illuminates the dense copse of willow and camphor trees. Come morning, his brother will remove his happuri, kiss his brow, and tearfully drag him back to their clan house. There will be no feathers smelling of soot and wood smoke bound in his hair—all will return to what it was before.    

Tobirama closes his eyes and absently rubs at the sudden ache in his chest. This will all turn out for the best. His Anija will find another way to secure peace and if Tobirama keeps his gaze averted, he won’t be able to see the disappointment plain in those dark eyes.

The crickets take up their chirping, ignorant to his internal struggle.

Sometime later, a particularly jarring crack of thunder startles Tobirama out of a light doze. Immediately, he curses his body’s betrayal and his species’ skill for being able to find sleep anywhere. Most of all, he curses his bad luck as the nutty smell of flight oil assaults his senses.

Sharingan eyes blink slowly in the darkness, underscored by the gleam of a Cheshire smile. “Found you,” Uchiha Izuna says, all sly confidence as he squats not a pace away.

“Your mistake,” Tobirama snaps back, baring his teeth and lashing out just shy of caving in Izuna’s hollow skull with his heel.

As Izuna opens his wings wide and skitters back out of range, Tobirama hurriedly digs his claws into the tree bole, flinging himself to an adjacent branch. He winces as he lands wrong, but rights himself and flashes through a series of hand signs swift as thought. Suddenly, water is ripped right out of the sodden air and coalesces into a ferocious dragon head. Roaring loud enough to make the air vibrate, it bears down on Izuna without mercy, twice his height and just as fierce.

Though, as quick as the jutsu is, Izuna proves to be faster. He drops to his haunches and, in an impressive show of flexibility, flattens his torso to the branch. His wings spread and flatten along with his body in a maneuver no avian would ever do instinctually. Chakra crackles along his pinions and flares at the tips, drawing the great jutsu dragon down over the tree limb to chase the feathers loosed in its draft. It would be a magnificent strategy and well worth studying if Tobirama’s freedom weren’t on the line.   

As such, he yowls and flashes his elongated eye-teeth in warning, switching strategies.

The suiton jutsu races back into the air at his behest, gaining momentum, then bursts into a barrage of needle-thin drops, spearing everything in their path like a hail of senbon. Leaves shred wherever the errant water strikes, aimed precisely at that delicate, black and white plumage.

Laughing, Izuna rolls with the momentum and allows himself to fall off of the branch before the deadliest portion of the wave hits. His cries of amusement are more the cheeps of a songbird than anything remotely human. Tobirama frowns at how similar they sound to the calls Madara had made earlier.

“This isn’t going to work, you know?” Izuna calls out as his wings snap open to abort his descent. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re good. Really good. But the forest isn’t your friend, Senju Tobirama!”

Tobirama doesn’t waste energy on entertaining the taunt. Instead, he uses the advantage of his springboard legs to leap several meters straight up to where the tree limbs bow under his weight. He grips the thin branches with hands and feet and takes off on all fours to better distribute his bulk.

Izuna immediately launches off of an adjacent tree in pursuit. The swishing strokes of his wings sound like a wall of descending katana even over the rain. His face darts into and out of Tobirama’s periphery, seeming to float where his indigo mantle blends into the night.

Sooner than he would like, Tobirama’s lungs start to ache, breath coming sharp and fast. The lean muscles in his shoulders burn with the sustained run. He isn’t built for endurance. Short bursts of speed are his element—in sprints, his prowess is unparalleled even by Hashirama. The thrice-damned shrike shouldn’t even be able to maneuver in the forest from what the scrolls had described.

Though, it’s a stroke of luck that it’s only Izuna he has to contend with, and from the sound of it, he’s not faring any better than Tobirama despite the light drizzle the rain has become. No matter the outcome of this race, he’ll see to it that the Uchiha brat doesn’t have the energy to pin him.

If speed will not be his ally, then his natural grappling ability will.

Tobirama abruptly drops three meters in the canopy and allows the foliage to devour him.

Surprisingly, Izuna snaps his wings back and follows without hesitation.

“I don’t know why you’re trying so hard,” he shouts as he rockets past in a shower of leaves. A well-executed acrobatic maneuver sets him swirling past a massive tree trunk and gives his mocking lilt a ventriloquial affect. “Would it really be such a bad thing to be our mate? Our chicks would certainly be the prettiest in the flock, and you wouldn’t think it, but Nii-san is a dream at color-coordinating nests.”

“This marriage hunt is a mockery and I’ll snap your neck before you manage to place your teeth in mine, Uchiha,” Tobirama hisses in warning. It’s unsettling the way Izuna implies that he and Madara are cooperating in this. However, while polyamory isn’t unheard of, it’s a rare enough occurrence that Tobirama dismisses the uneasiness rather quickly. Izuna has always thought himself a master of obfuscation and cleverness. This jibe is no different.

Another peeping call sounds so near Tobirama’s ears flatten. “Oh, I don’t doubt that. You’re a right bastard through and through. But, I didn’t go through the pain of having my teeth sharpened for nothing. Why are you cat-types always so bitey, anyways?” Izuna asks a little breathlessly despite his attempts to sound unaffected by the chase.

He swoops up from the darkness and glides for a beat, locking eyes, red on red. Tobirama snarls and whips his head away, but not before capturing an image of Izuna’s tender smile softened by moonlight. The obvious play-acting makes Tobirama’s gut roil.

“Once you stop being a contrary ass, we’re going to make such a gorgeous flock, you know. I bet our chicks will end up having your ridiculous Senju height. Big, white wings and dark eyes. For the hair, let’s go with mine because Nii-san’s is a briar patch on the best of days. But they’ll have his shoulders and his build—the best of all three of us.”

Be it through his superior speed or Izuna’s untimely death, Tobirama just wants this to be over with, to get Izuna to _stop talking_. There’s a small vale up ahead that will serve his purposes well enough. He’ll leap down and bolster his claws with the full force of the Nakano at his back—anything to make the man fall silent with his incessant wheedling.

However, before they can reach the clearing, the forest rustles in warning, louder than Tobirama has ever heard it.

Izuna rolls over, belly-up, and vanishes for a brief second under Tobirama’s bough. Suddenly, there’s a flurry of feathers ascending far too close for comfort and talons latching onto the delicate tufts on his ears from above. Keeping up his centripetal momentum, Izuna executes a neat barrel roll that rips Tobirama’s center of gravity off kilter and sends them both hurtling down to the forest floor below.

“Whoops!” Izuna cries, laughing all the while.

Tobirama slams a fist into his stomach, landing the blow with a solid thud, and trusts in his body to reflexively correct his position midair. He’ll make it out of this unharmed. It’s the abrasive, mocking cheeps above him, echoed in the darkness below, that are most worrisome.  

Rising like a leviathan, massive gray wings unfurl. They extend well into the shadows and fill Tobirama’s nose with the inevitability of mate-scent. Instantly, the pieces settle into place.

Izuna is a shrike—a crafty, duplicitous, Sage-damned shrike and Madara is the thorn. There was only ever one voice upraised in the forest. Now that he’s heard it, Madara’s call is so much deeper, a staccato chatter followed by a piercing cry that can only mean victory.

Strong arms pluck him right out of the air and Tobirama grunts under the force of their heavy landing. He’s never faced Madara in battle before—that was always Hashirama’s purview—but the thickness of muscle pressed up against his front doesn’t bode well for grappling his way out of this.

“Release me, Uchiha, this is your only warning before I draw blood,” he snarls, fisting his claws in Madara’s haori and gnashing his teeth a scant inch away from the Uchiha’s throat. There’s a noticeable flutter of excitement in the massive, gray pinions brushing up his thighs.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Madara trill in the face of Tobirama’s flattened ears and curled lips. “That’s kind of the point of all of this, isn’t it?”

Izuna’s continued delight draws closer. There’s a jarring impact against his back, and Tobirama finds himself slammed forward into Madara’s body as they all tumble to the forest floor in a tangle of limbs. Those impossibly strong arms lock around Tobirama’s chest, trapping him and binding his own arms against his body. The scent of interest floods his nostrils in a wash of cloying sweetness so potent he begins to salivate despite himself.

Talons dig into his scalp and the heat of Izuna’s lips settles against his nape, heralded by the acrid tang of tempura.

It’s an exceedingly rare occurrence for participants in a marriage hunt to die at their prospective mate’s hands, but he’s happy to add to the statistic in this circumstance. He refuses to be taken like this, run down and spitted like prey—slavering against his wishes and hungry for it. Tobirama struggles to stretch his neck, then, pupils dilating, he dives in for the kill.

With one long, sustained whistle, Izuna wrenches his head to the side such that his mouth lands on bunched clothing instead of the softness of Madara’s bobbing throat. His jaw reflexively closes like a steel trap, too caught up in the need to tear and rend to do anything else. Blood fills the fabric and that inherent need to maim turns into something different, but no less violent for it. There’s an honest rawness to the way his hips begin to grind down with each swallow.

He couldn’t stop if he wanted to.

He clamps down even harder and takes great pleasure in the way Madara writhes under him, calling out like a stuck rabbit. Blood continues to flow and the sound eventually lessens, but then Madara’s pretty shriek devolves into merriment. It takes a moment of blinking rapidly and inhaling through his flared nostrils for Tobirama to realize what he’s done.

“So eager, isn’t he, Nii-san,” Izuna croons from where he’s plastered himself along the curve of Tobirama’s back. “I think you’re supposed to bite him back, now. That’s what the Senju envoy said in any case.”

No. _No_. Tobirama tries to rear back, but he’s trapped by avian bodies and instincts alike. Need rages hot and demanding in his loins, at war with the part of him that would more prefer penetrating the Uchiha with a foot of steel than anything deserving of a mate. He doesn’t realize he’s keening until Izuna points it out in a sing-song voice that has nothing to do with his animal affinity.

Through the curtain of shame, a bright point of discomfort pulls at his clavicle and not a second later teeth—sharpened just for this specific moment—are slipping though his skin and binding them together more thoroughly than any peace accord.

Bolts of completion and belonging pierce through him. The feel is alien and new, a looming tsunami in relation to the gentle tide of his brother’s love and with all the same capacity to destroy.

Hashirama is going to be so pleased with him, he thinks helplessly as he drowns.

Madara works his mouth, tonguing the protrusion of bone against his lips and hums thoughtfully. His wings rise up around all three of them, pulling Izuna close and encouraging him to take advantage of Tobirama’s distraction. Without hesitation, he does, planting a soft kiss right at the base of the Senju’s skull, then digging in deep.

The position of the bite sets off every predatory warning in Tobirama’s body. White afterimages in the darkness blind him as his pupils contract and dilate in rapid succession. The faculties that are left to him struggle to resist the urge to push back into the burn of that wet mouth, to bare his throat and go limp against the hot press of lips and hands and wings.

If the force of Madara’s mating bite is the rage of the sea, Izuna’s is the rocky shore upon which it crashes. There’s no give, only hip bones like knife points digging into his buttocks and the inevitable crush of Tobirama’s will.

Luckily, the Uchiha don’t linger. Izuna and Madara disengage simultaneously. Then, there’s the taste of skin and sweat as Madara wedges his fingers between Tobirama’s teeth and eases his jaws apart, unresisting. The darkness presses in and Tobirama’s ears fill with cotton. He’s only vaguely aware of the cheery conversation going on around him—and remains equally as distanced from the feel of hands maneuvering him to sit upright against a tree.  

Echoes of surf waylay him.

Then, there’s a weight in his lap, thighs bracketing his waist, and once again his teeth are sinking into flesh. As if that was all his hindbrain was waiting for, he latches on, hauling Izuna forward to crush them together, chest to hips. Blood fills his mouth, sweeter this time, and the partial bond roars to full, overwhelming life.  

Tobirama screws his eyes shut. He knows he’s lost, but none of that matters now. There will be time for mourning when his lynx-side isn’t crying out at the joy of having two mates to bring into his clowder.

“Is he purring?” Madara asks incredulously from what feels like leagues away.

Izuna snorts. “I’d say it was cute if this didn’t hurt so damn much. Seriously, why all of the _biting_?”

“It’s just how they do things,” Madara responds, and Tobirama can hear the shrug in his voice.

When the maelstrom of instincts starts to recede, Tobirama lets his jaw go slack and leans back against the tree trunk. The steady rumble of contentment dies in his chest. He tilts his head up to catch the drizzle, allowing the rain to wash away the blood on his lips before it grows tacky.

“This debacle is absolutely not how we do things,” he says, voice flat. “Regardless, you all now have what you wanted. Brother will have his village and the two of you have effectively nullified a threat.” And it’s true. His was the loudest voice of dissent, the strongest arm barring the gate of this peace treaty.

Madara’s almost preternatural warmth startles him when it comes to rest against his side. “Why are you so disagreeable? You act like peace is a bad thing. It’s hard to believe you and Hashirama even come from the same nest,” he grunts.

The off-handed insult wounds far more than it should. It’s not the concept of peace with which he finds exception, but his autonomy being the price for it. Somehow it’s always him being made to sacrifice.

He must wince as the barb hits home, because Izuna promptly presses the advantage and buries his face in Tobirama’s hair. His wings—small, but densely patterned this close up—curl around them. “It’s okay, Tobi, we’ll love you even if the Senju don’t,” he coos as he proceeds to nuzzle in a way that Tobirama can only describe as preening behavior. If he weren’t familiar with Izuna’s specific flavor of cruelty, he would mistake the careful grooming as intended to comfort and reassure. As it is, he knows a jab when he hears it, and this one cuts deep.

It takes a great deal of restraint not to send the demon tumbling back on his ass, but there’s no point in resisting any more. The damage is done.

They both know it.

“You talk too much, Uchiha. Both of you. Yes, you’ve claimed me. You’ve won. Congratulations. But, if you intend to finish what you started and fuck me, you’re not doing a very good job of it,” Tobirama bites back, the bridge of his nose wrinkling in distaste. He can feel Izuna’s smile on his neck.

There’s a long-suffering sigh, then the soft slap of leather against his cheek. The sting is shocking enough for Tobirama to snap his attention to the pale sliver of Madara’s face, only a hand-span away.

“Whatever you think of my clan, we’re not rapists, Senju. I’m not mounting or being mounted like some animal in the dirt. The mating claim is good enough to begin drafting the treaty. However long it takes for you to pull the stick out of your ass and complete the bond after that is entirely up to you,” Madara states, eyes narrowed and lips pressed thin. “And you,” he snaps at Izuna, “need to stop antagonizing.”

“Me? I would never, Nii-san,” Izuna drawls, the very picture of innocence.

Tobirama blinks slowly. It’s honestly surprising to hear Uchiha Madara, the bold, brash conflagration, speak so respectfully about these things. While he didn’t allow himself to linger on the what-ifs before the first hunt chime rang out, Tobirama had not expected to be treated so fairly if he were to actually be taken down.

“These terms are acceptable,” he agrees after a moment of consideration.

“Plus, who says you get to be the one getting fucked?” Izuna mouths into his skin.

Ah. No matter how unforeseen Madara’s generosity might be, Izuna’s persistent capability of being a little shit is a constant in any situation. The familiarity is grounding in a way. Tobirama doesn’t deign to answer, instead motioning for Madara to carry on with the rest of the formalities.

His own instincts have been settled, all that is left is to submit to their more avian displays.

Madara carefully extends one wing, so much larger than anything Tobirama has seen before and instructs him to choose two coverts, which he does after a moment of hesitation. The feathers are elegant and long with a variegated gray pattern and black tips. Their delicate construction is something Tobirama would enjoy studying, and he suspects he will be spending a great deal of time doing just that once the village is established.

“Goshawk,” Madara says apropos of nothing.

Tobirama simply raises an eyebrow as he eases out feathers the length of his hand and places them into Madara’s expectant palm.

“Don’t give me that look. Hashirama said you like to analyze everything and I can see you already starting. My plumage is patterned after a goshawk.”

“Which explains how you were able to navigate the forest despite the breadth of your wingspan,” Tobirama replies. If he’d had time to gather data before the announcement of the hunt, things could have been different. He would have taken the threat far more seriously. Regardless, he is mated and his uncharacteristic ignorance is a moot point now.

The weight of Izuna’s arms across his bare shoulders recedes as he wriggles in Tobirama’s lap. “If you could not give Nii-san any more of an ego trip than he already has over those sky-dusters, that would be great,” he says dryly, shoving Madara’s wing aside and replacing it with his own.

Tobirama returns that petulance in kind and plucks two feathers at random with no regard for how inartfully he tears them out. His reward is a surprised screech and a string of curses. Izuna flaps wildly as he digs his talons into Tobirama’s biceps.

“Alright, you’ve had your fun,” Madara interjects before the situation escalates. “Izuna is a shrike, though I’m sure you know that by now.”

Tobirama exhales heavily, but says nothing. He closes his eyes and ducks his head for the feathers to be anchored in his hair with molten chakra. In so doing, he fails to see the tenderness with which Madara and Izuna make their own exchange.

Gloved fingers under his chin have Tobirama jerking his head up and coming face to face with his long-time enemy, so close he can smell the lingering remnants of tempura on his breath. He’s so used to having his night vision drain the color from his surroundings, that he can’t help but to immediately lock onto Madara’s sharingan. It illuminates his face with such a deep crimson. Risk of genjutsu or not—he can’t look away.

“No biting now, Senju,” Madara warns. He hovers for a moment to make certain that Tobirama understands, mate or not, he will not broker refusal in this. Tobirama swallows heavily and leans forward into the press of Madara’s hand in answer, lets the Uchiha trace the line of his jaw and settle his fire-hot touch on Tobirama’s nape.

He doesn’t resist when, satisfied with the show of capitulation, Madara crowds into his space and deftly plaits two short braids of hair—nor does he flinch at the glimmer of a knife so close to his face. Perhaps he’ll gain another scar to match the three he already has. Maybe Madara will be gracious enough to slip the blade even lower and end it.

Unfortunately, he’s given no such gift.

Madara takes the two locks and binds their edges so they don’t unravel. The whiteness of the hair stands out in stark contrast against the Uchiha brothers’ temples as they simultaneously anchor the signs of claim.

“There, it’s done,” Madara says, keeping his smile brief in a rare show of mercy.

“So it is,” Tobirama replies, only now reaching up to feel the shape of the feathers brushing against his cheek. Even wet, they’re softer than he had imagined, girded by rachides of steel. If he were a man of poetry, he would say that description was a reflection of the Uchiha themselves. As it is, he simply accepts the pragmatics of feathers having a stiff core to accommodate for atmospheric forces and leaves it at that.  

Izuna watches the coverts dance along pale fingertips, swirling in place. His smile takes on a softer edge.

“Alright, let’s get you home, lover-boy,” he pipes up to cover his misstep, rocking to his feet with one strong beat of his wings.  

Tobirama glances up at the palm extended to him, callous-rough and open like the offer of an armistice. It’s only with a brief flash of trepidation that he takes it.  

 

 

 


End file.
